What is Meditation: Illuminations by Sadhguru
Jaggi Vasudev is a world renowned Indian mystic, poet, best-selling author and founder of Isha Foundation. He is often referred to as “Sadhguru”, which as per him, is not a title. Rather, it is a description meaning “Uneducated Guru”. He is known to modestly dismiss any pretensions of being well versed in the scriptures and says that instead of coming from scholarship, he comes from an inner experience and all he has to offer is a method to know our ultimate nature. One of the methods is his idea of meditation.
What is meditation?
Sadhguru’s ideology on meditation deviates from the contemporary view of meditation as a process. Rather, Sadhguru avers, meditation is not something one can do, rather what one can be.
Being meditative is a quality that can be blossomed by the harmonious cultivation of the body, mind, emotion, and energy to a certain level of preparedness. He draws a parallel between bracing up the body and the onset of spring, as both provide a suitable milieu for an unparalleled divinity of mind, body and nature, to flourish.
What is the purpose of meditation?
Sadhguru believes that in today’s world of self-entitlement, the boons of progress have acquired chimeric dimensions because of our inability to know the art of personal management. Everything else might be in place, but the human being is displaced within himself. In a situation like this, the necessity of becoming meditative, becomes paramount. Very simply put, meditation’s purpose is, self-preservation in the fallen world we inhabit. It is because meditation, as Sadhguru avers, is a type of “inner technology” that empowers the individual, to “engineer” his/ her system.
One might wonder why should we not let the body be, what is the need for “engineering” it. Those are perfectly reasonable questions, but the answer is rather, simple. Our body, as per Sadhguru, is turning against us, because we abuse it consciously and unconsciously. We do the same with our mind. The struggle to manage what we were born with cannot be sustained without learning the art of warfare. To not underestimate the opponent: we are our own enemy here. Leaving the body and mind to their discretion, is an irresponsible act. Such carelessness the world over has resulted in over 70% of human ailments being self-created. If we can create problems, we also hold the power to solve them. This tool is provided by meditation.
Sadhguru believes that today, we have so identified with our physical nature, that we erroneously associate the inner longing for expansion with a physical expression that comes with a defined boundary- be it for love, knowledge or money. What we fail to realize is that the very source of creation is within us.
Sadhguru wants us to understand that if only a drop of intelligence of creation entered our lives, our life would flow magically, and not miserably.
The effects of meditation are said to be numerous, be it, as even documented by surveys: a more well balanced cardiac autonomous nervous system, an overall increase in heart rate visibility, better cardiac response during stressful situations, greater brain activity coherence and higher delta band power known to reflect a kind of sixth sense. Improved focus and attention spans, better quality of sleep are other health perks among endless more.
Most importantly, meditation aligns the physical, mental and “pranic” body, so that an “overwhelming experience of joyfulness” will naturally transpire from within.
Originally published at spiritualliving.co on August 2, 2017.
